UN to hear Palestinian bid for statehood

JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Authority is to seek recognition of a Palestinian state when the United Nations Security Council meets in New York next week.

Mahmoud Abbas formally committed to demanding what he called “our legitimate right” to a state in a speech here Friday, ending weeks of intense speculation about exactly how the Palestinian president was going to present a declaration for statehood.

“We need to have full membership at the UN. We need a state, a seat at the United Nations and nothing more,” Abbas said during his address. The speech was broadcast live across the Middle East by Arab-language all-news networks from the Palestinians’ provisional capital northeast of Jerusalem, which both the Palestinians and Israelis claim as their capital.

Abbas’ declaration puts the Palestinians on a collision course with the U.S. and Israel, which have both insisted that the only way to establish a Palestinian state is through direct negotiations. The Palestinians have countered that their dramatic policy shift is required because several decades of on-again, off-again peace talks have led nowhere.

Canada will oppose an upcoming bid for statehood at the United Nations by Palestinians, said Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

On Friday, Harper said this sort of “unilateral action” on behalf of the Palestinian Authority is “very regrettable” and won’t help the goal of establishing long-term peace in the Middle East.

The U.S. already promised Israel that it would use its Security Council veto to block a Palestinian demand for statehood. However, if Washington exercises its veto power, it will further diminish the dwindling U.S. standing across the Middle East, where the so-called Arab Spring, with its calls for political freedom, democracy and justice, has brought growing demands that Palestinian concerns be immediately addressed.

Abbas said his government’s demand that Palestine be recognized by the UN as its 194th member state, which he intended to formally make to the UN on Sept. 23, was not designed to isolate Israel. “Nobody can annul Israel’s legitimacy,” he said. “It’s a recognized country.”

But “we need to put an end to the occupation and take away the legal status of the occupation,” Abbas said, referring to territory that Israel has held in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the 1967 war.

“Peace will not be achieved by a unilateral approach to the United Nations,” was the only comment from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Abbas’s speech, which came on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, the New York Times reported.

Despite the certainty of a U.S. veto in the 15-member Security Council, it is expected that the UN General Assembly, with support from countries such as Russia and France, will overwhelmingly back an upgrade to the Palestinians’ current observer status at the world body to some form of limited statehood.

Abbas warned Palestinians that gaining recognition at the UN as a state within the pre-1967 borders, including parts of Jerusalem, did not mean that “the occupation will come to an end, but we will at least have recognition that we are under occupation and not a disputed territory, as Israel says.”

As the date of the Palestinian demand for UN recognition approaches, the U.S. and the European Union both have been pressing the Palestinians and the Israelis to somehow reach a compromise to at least delay the showdown for several months.

Among the principal players in this effort has been Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, who as the special envoy for the so-called Middle East Quartet of the U.S., the UN, the EU and Russia has been conducting shuttle diplomacy here this week.

But judging by Abbas’ speech on Friday, the window for compromise or delay seems to now be all but closed.

Netanyahu is fly to New York next week to state Israel’s strong opposition to the Palestinian bid for statehood. The White House confirmed Friday that President Barack Obama will meet with Netanyahu during the latter’s visit. Obama will also meet next meet in New York with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who has become an increasingly loud and bitter critic of Israel.

“The way to achieve this peace is through direct negotiations,” Netanyahu said on Thursday. “There is no way to impose peace by diktat.”

Although Netanyahu made it plain that he regarded many members of the UN as hostile to Israel and uninterested in the facts of the matter, he said: “I’ve decided to go there anyway — not to win applause, but to speak the truth to every nation that wants to hear truth.”

The Palestinian bid for statehood comes at a complicated time for Israel diplomatically. Amid great uncertainty about where the Arab Spring might eventually lead, the Jewish state’s key relations with Turkey and Egypt have become seriously frayed at a time when the U.S., beset by serious financial problems and an uncertain war in Afghanistan, appears to be losing influence across the region.

There is no telling yet what the immediate reaction to the Palestinian declaration will be in the West Bank, Gaza or Israel. But large demonstrations are expected next Friday at Israeli checkpoints and near several Jewish settlements.

At least three additional Israeli army battalions are to be deployed to the West Bank to protect checkpoints and settlements from potential attacks by Palestinian mobs and to monitor the activities of right-wing settlers who recently have attacked Palestinian villages and Israeli military bases, Israeli media reported Friday.

Forces in border areas near Egypt and the Gaza Strip also were being reinforced, the reports said. Other regular and reservist units were on standby to move in if trouble flared and a state of emergency were declared.

Troops being deployed to the West Bank have been given extra training in riot control in case such tactics are required to counter violent mass protests.

While he has encouraged public displays of support for his position, Abbas repeated Friday than he wanted demonstrators to remain peaceful and avoid confrontation with Israeli security forces that might risk turning into a third intifada.

As a practical matter, UN recognition of some kind of Palestinian independence is unlikely to alter any of the current realities on the ground. But Abbas has said he hopes it can provide a legal basis for action against Israel in international tribunals dealing with human rights as well as the International Court of Justice.